To upgrade to OS 6 or stay

Well long story short after finally being able to convince my father to ditch his samsung flip phone my brother gave him his old 9700 but its running OS 5 do you think its worth for me to upgrade his device to OS 6 he mostly just uses it to text and call and he has 5-6 ish apps only 2 are over the 3mb mark. What would yo do ?

I say upgrade but only if you're tech savvy and willing to do it. Download and install the latest hybrid (B@stard - Apt (20130118)), shrink the OS with BB Boss to the bare bones. Total should take about an hour of time. I run 24 downloaded apps and boot with 30 megs Application Memory free and I will last about a day on OS6. Set automatic restart overnight with Advanced OS and LED. Much better UI and start screen, universal search feature, markedly improved browser is all worth it. OS6 is already very outdated, running OS5 is like going back to the stone ages...

I occasionally use my Bold 9700, love the Bold form factor and battery life. Shrunk OS6.668 with BB Boss, reasonably stable but web browsing was always hit or miss.
Just recently rolled back to OS5 and downloaded B@stard - B5 (20121210) OS5 Hybrid

Mines running os6 with B@stard Aikido hybrid also a super clean theme with os7 icons and its working brilliantly, no problems surfing the web all day long on both 3g and wifi. Some pages are too large and a message comes up telling me it has to close, but not that often and those pages were too large pre upgrade anyway.
Changed the feel of the phone, like it's new again.

Well long story short after finally being able to convince my father to ditch his samsung flip phone my brother gave him his old 9700 but its running OS 5 do you think its worth for me to upgrade his device to OS 6 he mostly just uses it to text and call and he has 5-6 ish apps only 2 are over the 3mb mark. What would yo do ?

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900

Keep
It
Simple
Silly

If your Dad is using the phone as a phone, and a text machine, and not trying to be a power user like some of the tech-heads around here, let sleeping dogs lie. Hybriding and issues are best avoided if you're not trying to wring every ounce of performance out of the phone. You see several commentz that things can be hit or miss, so why make dad mad, unnecessarily?

But if you get it right its actually easier to use! I know what an old person needs from a phone with my inlaws just got their first, and takeing it back until they found one they could use.
I reckon if I gave him my 9700 the way it is he'd have no problems useing it its so simply layed out.

It entirely depends on your father. BlackBerry 6 loses most of its "selling point" if you use themes, and the default BlackBerry 6 theme is a lot of trouble: not optimized for trackpad use and lots of redundancy (favorites, media, frequent tabs), might even confuse your father while it's rolling.

Also, a hybrid OS is a must, otherwise there will be memory problems. I personally use BL6 and so far I'm fine.

Browser is rendered entirely useless for anything that doesn't have mobile site, although it works beautifully on mobile sites (which kind of defeats the point). It has tabs, and some sites (especially wikis) render better with BlackBerry 6 browser, not to mention that BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 uses Mozilla Firefox 3 (ancient even by Firefox standard) for its Firefox masking feature, and some sites refuse to support (and consequently load for) such ancient software. It comes at the cost of huge memory problems and losing Column View. I used to read Cracked.com with Column View and it's awesome. Image quality also drops quite far.

HOWEVER, WhatsApp can only detect MicroSD card on BlackBerry 6, and BBM 7 requires at least BlackBerry 6 when it was first launched, so if you load BlackBerry 6, at least you'll have a better chance of accessing later softwares.

Well long story short after finally being able to convince my father to ditch his samsung flip phone my brother gave him his old 9700 but its running OS 5 do you think its worth for me to upgrade his device to OS 6 he mostly just uses it to text and call and he has 5-6 ish apps only 2 are over the 3mb mark. What would yo do ?

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900

In addition to what i pasted above, if your wanting to update to OS6, i would also recommend looking at running a Hybrid OS check here.

Overall, I like the feel and the redesigned menus, although text messages are a little tricky - scroll to the right and the previous sms thread appears. Themes are available from BB AppWorld; there are plenty of free ones, but I can't find any of British rock band Status Quo!

On the down side, there is some performance degradation, but it's only just noticeable.

So in summary, it's a case of "whatever you want" (to use a Quo-phemism). I'd say go for it.

Personally I've had bad experiences with OS6 on this Bold even when running a hybrid. The fresh install runs nice, after a few weeks I start to get problems like, videos on YouTube don't buffer properly, phone becomes slow, zooming images lags the phone A LOT and the web browser sucks. The only problem I have with OS5 is its appearance, menus suck, the browser sucks too but at least it will open any website.

Well long story short after finally being able to convince my father to ditch his samsung flip phone my brother gave him his old 9700 but its running OS 5 do you think its worth for me to upgrade his device to OS 6 he mostly just uses it to text and call and he has 5-6 ish apps only 2 are over the 3mb mark. What would yo do ?

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900

From what you describe, I think it would be best to keep OS5. Yes, native browser is not great but Opera Mini is a good browser. Some websites may not render correctly, but I still contend it is a better browser than OS5's native browser. Like someone else mentioned, keep it simple, especially if your Dad is using the phone for mainly phone calls and texting.

Well long story short after finally being able to convince my father to ditch his samsung flip phone my brother gave him his old 9700 but its running OS 5 do you think its worth for me to upgrade his device to OS 6 he mostly just uses it to text and call and he has 5-6 ish apps only 2 are over the 3mb mark. What would yo do ?

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900

only unless you know how to properly shrink the OS, and if your dad is an intelligent user.
The 9700 on os6 requires a lot of thinking on the users part or it really isn't a pleasant experience.

From what you describe, I think it would be best to keep OS5. Yes, native browser is not great but Opera Mini is a good browser. Some websites may not render correctly, but I still contend it is a better browser than OS5's native browser. Like someone else mentioned, keep it simple, especially if your Dad is using the phone for mainly phone calls and texting.

This is what I had end up doing to some of my relative's devices. Just kept things simple for them. If you introduce something new, they sometimes won't even take advantage. Besides something could go wrong in the upgrade process.

Os6 on a 9700 is only recommended for "advanced" users. Os5 is horrible. If you can live with os5 then my opinion is that your smartphone needs are not very high at all. If you can't properly shrink an OS and then maintain the install, then os6 is not for you on a 9700.

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